Category Archives: OSMF

Posts about organisation of the OpenStreetMap Foundation. Working groups, the board, and other entities, and how we structure our organisation

Vote for OpenStreetMap Foundation candidates for the Board

The 2011 election is under way for members of the OpenStreetMap Foundation Board of Directors. Further to our previous post, there’s now nine candidates to choose from, which is great! Members of the OSMF can vote in person at the annual general meeting at State of the Map or by proxy via email. Probably many people will be doing the email option. The list of candidates and voting details are found on the wiki.

Please read the email instructions carefully. Note that the deadline for voting by email is coming in a couple of days time: Thu 8th at 17:00 UTC.

If you need to join the foundation first then time is definitely running out! (There’s a delay for processing by the membership secretary) Join the OpenStreetMap Foundation here.

Questions to candidates and discussions can be found on the OSMF-talk@ archives and on the Election discussion page on the wiki.

Vote photo by Marc Tarlock is licensed CC-By-SA

Board elections and other OSMF changes

We’re about to see some changes to the OSMF. The most pressing thing to be aware of is the election of new board members:

Board elections

There are four board seats up for grabs, so this represents a considerable change of faces leading our organisation. As was announced previously, we’ll be taking votes by email from 1st September. Before that though we need a finalised list of candidates. The candidates for election (so far) are listed on this wiki page.

Some good candidates but we’d like some more. We have four board seats to fill, and it’s clearly a more healthy democratic situation if we’ve got a bit of a choice. We’re looking for people who can lead our organisation to success in 2011 and going forwards. We’d like to see dedicated OSMers, people who are engaged with the community, but perhaps also people who are in a position to reach out beyond the community. We’d also like to see geographic diversity. The relative importance of these factors will be up to the voters.

If you have ideas for people who fit the bill, now is the time to have a whisper in their ear and persuade them to run for election. Ideally candidates will ensure there is a description of themselves on their wiki user page, and preferably also an election manifesto, before adding themselves to the list. But don’t forget nominations close on Wednesday 31st in time for voting to commence the day after.

To run as a candidate, and also to take part in voting you need to be a fully paid up member of the foundation, so be sure to join the foundation now if you haven’t already.

Management Team

Another recent change has been the introduction of a new “Management Team”. This new group is made up of representatives from the various working groups and (as detailed on the Management Team page) is tasked with regular feedback from/to the working groups, scoping of working groups, and decisions around implementing the budget. One of the main reasons behind this is to ease the workload of the board by taking care of some of the day-to-day trouble-shooting issues. There are various potential downsides to this idea, which people have raised on the osmf-talk mailing list. It remains to be seen how well it will work, and nothing is set in stone, but hopefully this will make life easier for board members new and old, and free them up to do more strategic decision-making.

Engineering Working Group

Also announced recently, we have a new “Engineering Working Group” with the task of assisting and guiding the community-driven development of OSM-related source code and tools. Again it remains to be seen how well this will work, and this is very open to some more keen participation. To be clearer about separation of concerns here, the “Technical Working Group” has been renamed as the “Operations Working Group”. You can find definitions of all of these teams, their membership, and their meeting details linked from the Working Groups page .

OpenStreetMap Foundation AGM and board election

Henk Hoff, Secretary of the OpenStreetMap Foundation, announced today that the next Annual General Meeting of the OSMF and election for board members will be held at State of the Map – Denver.

To all members of OpenStreetMap Foundation,

NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that the 5th Annual General Meeting of the OpenStreetMap Foundation will be held at the State of the Map 2011 conference, Auraria Campus, Denver, Colorado, USA, at 12:30 MDT, Sunday, 11 September 2011.

You do NOT have to join the conference to attend the meeting. Attendance of the AGM is free. However, if you would also like to join SOTM 2011, you can still register at http://stateofthemap.org/register-now/

OSMF AGM Agenda: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Foundation/AGM11

Nominations are also now open for three OSMF board positions at the AGM. Nominations close on Wednesday, 31 August 2011 at 1700 UTC.

To add a nomination or your own name please see the instructions at http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Foundation/AGM11/Election_to_Board or send an email to secretary [AT] osmfoundation.org .

All (at the start of the AGM) paid-up members of the Foundation are eligible to stand for election to the Board. If you are not already a member of the Foundation then you can sign up via http://www.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Join.
If you have questions concerning your membership contact membership [AT] osmfoundation.org .

All (at the start of the AGM) paid-up members of the Foundation are eligible to vote at the Board election.

Proxy voting by email opens on Thursday, 01 September 2011 at 0900 UTC. Details on proxy voting by email can be found on the wiki at http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Foundation/AGM11/Election_to_Board

The final vote will be taken at the AGM itself.

Henk Hoff
Secretary
OpenStreetMap Foundation
secretary@osmfoundation.org

Name & Registered Office:
OpenStreetMap Foundation
132 Maney Hill Road
Sutton Coldfield
West Midlands
B72 1JU
United Kingdom
A company limited by guarantee, registered in England and Wales.
Registration No. 05912761.

Sent by Henk Hoff to the osmf-announce mailing list

Membership updates

The membership team have been running a bit behind on OpenStreetMap Foundation membership renewal reminders. They should now have sent an email for everyone with an expiry before early June and have replied to everyone who has renewed or joined. If you expected to hear from them or if your main email address has changed, please send an update to the membership team at membership@osmfoundation.org

Emilie Laffray resignation

Emilie Laffray has resigned from her position as board member and treasurer of the OpenStreetMap Foundation. The board has accepted her resignation with regret and thanks Emilie for all of her work as member of the board.

The board appointed Oliver Kühn to the position of treasurer previously held by Emilie Laffray.

The OpenStreetMap Foundation board will continue with six members until the next board election.

Working Group Summary

These summaries do not replace the formal minutes of the working groups, they are intended to be a quick and easy summary of recent topics before the working groups.

Communication Working Group

31 January 2011 – The CWG continued minor improvements to the OSMF blog web site. SotM was announced for Denver. CWG seeks OSM contributors who would like to translate materials for the OSMF web site.

Scheduled CWG meetings on 14 and 28 February 2011 were canceled due to scheduling conflicts.

License Working Group

01 February 2011 – Mike and Diane from Creative Commons joined the call and learned more about the OSM license upgrade to ODbL. Reviewed draft of CT v1.2.4 and started translation for international versions. An informal poll regarding per-changeset re-licensing was created. AND indicated their support for ODbL. Initiated contact with several web sites, etc. using OSM without the required attribution. Refer to Creative Commons community for guidance re OSM map in TV program.

08 February 2011 – LWG notes guidance from the board that waiting two or more years for Creative Commons to publish an acceptable data license is not in the best interests of OSM. Minimal response to the per-changeset re-licensing poll; 2 for; 2 indifferent. Translations of CT v1.2.4 are pending. Continued to pursue other attribution issues with contacts at several sites. No response from Creative Commons Community on CCBySA materials within TV shows or ads.

15 February 2011 – French translation of CT v1.2.4 in progress, information regarding the Italian translation is pending. Only five respondents to the per-changeset re-licensing poll; three for; two indifferent. LWG will not recommend creating tools to help manage this data. DWG has offered to help the individuals who wish to remove their questionable data and accept CT/ODbL. Extended poll to talk-gb for additional feedback. Geocaching.com has OSM options on their beta site and have improved their attribution, though a few lingering typos remain. SimpleGeo.com use OSM on a beta site. Attribution was corrected after contacting them. Still no reply for Ben Last / Nearmap regarding discussion in January. LWG decided against permitting revocation of CT acceptance.

22 February 2011 – French translation still in progress, information regarding the Italian translation is still pending. Coding for CT v1.2.4 is complete and pending review. CloudMade aware of their clients with attribution deficiencies; their tools ship with attribution on by default. GeoCaching.com aware of typos and fixing asap. SimpleGeo.com missed attribution on their live site as well and fixed it when notified. A new attribution / license deficiency came to the attention of LWG. CapeTownBicycleMap.co.za “didn’t use OSM but did look at colours for inspiration.”

01 March 2011 – adding decline button to CT page is in progress. CT v1.2.4 is live on http://www.osmfoundation.org/wiki/License/Contributor_Terms and pending on OSM.org. Other attribution deficiencies are in progress. Report of an iPhone app with correct attribution that was later removed.

Strategic Working Group

04 February 2011 – Further review of budgeting process; could be simpler. Review and revisions to tile policy and scorecard. Routing services scorecard and policy to follow.

11 February 2011 – Draft budget work flow document to be simplified further. Review tile policy and score card. Recommended the draft tile policy and score card to board for acceptance. Review of wikimapia use for discussion next week. First review of routing score card and policy.

18 February 2011 – Review simplified budget documents. To be referred to board for acceptance. Feedback from board on tile policy, “Clarify preference for non-commercial tiles.”

25 February 2011 – Budget recommendation forwarded to the board. Clarified “non-commercial” section of tile policy. Tile policy to be returned to the board for acceptance. Discussed Wikimapia and referred to the board without comment. Mikel to miss upcoming meetings due to travel; Henk to chair in the absence of Mikel. The SWG notes the withdrawal of Milo van der Linden from SWG and thanks him for his contributions.

04 March 2011 – Chaired by Henk Hoff. Steven to revise budget docs based on board feedback and discuss next week. Response on revised tile policy pending. Wikimapia was referred to board. Discussion routing services, particularly the merits of public facing routing service vs quality tool for mappers. Discussion to continue on mailing list and next week.

OSMF Working Group Summary

 

The second summary of OSMF Working Group summaries is up at the OSMF
site. This summary includes details from 5 working groups, the OSMF
board and about a dozen meetings.

 

http://blog.osmfoundation.org/2010/11/05/working-group-summary-2/

 

Don’t miss a minute of the fun.

 

Also included in the OSMF Blog today is the announcement of the dates
for State of the Map 2011 in Denver.

 

http://blog.osmfoundation.org/2010/11/05/state-of-the-map-2011-september-9-11…

 

“Be there or be square”

 

Meeting room photo by David Boyle http://www.flickr.com/photos/beglendc/
is licensed CC-By-SA http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en_CA

Working Group Summary

Working Group Summary from 19 October to 04 November 2010

The second instalment of these periodic OSMF updates includes information from five Working groups and the OSMF Board.

Summary of License Working Group call of 19 October 2010

Meeting shortened due to only four in attendance.  Previous minutes approved.

Group discussion of “Scope 2” item from “Open Issues” page on the wiki.  Potential solution to be considered by entire group on next call.

Summary of Data Working Group call of 20 October 2010

The parties in a tagging dispute and endless mutual edit reversions requested intervention by the DWG.  The community advised the parties to behave.  Further edit-wars will be met with sanctions in the form of account blocks.

Suspected use of OSM data without proper attribution was brought to the attention of DWG. Assigned for contact by a DWG member.

Summary of SotM Working group call of 20 October 2010

Continued selection process from 06 October 2010 meeting.  – Vienna, Addis Abbaba, Cuba, Denver and Tallin submitted bids. Denver was selected.

Summary of License Working Group call of 26 October 2010

LWG considered a major revision to CT 1, potentially reducing it to some equivalent of the wikipedia terms, “Content that violates any third-party copyrights will be deleted.”

The discussion of “Scope 2” was raised with the LWG and discussed.  The proposed solution of user acceptance and per-changeset opt-out was met with general approval.  Further reflection and discussion to consider how this interacts with potential change to CT1.

Summary of OSMF Board call of 29 October 2010

The OSMF board will meet in person in Pisa, Italy on the weekend of 16 December 2010

The board meetings will be held weekly from next Wednesday onwards to increase throughput and reduce reaction times.

The initiative of a SOTM-EU for next year is welcomed by the board but it is unlikely that active support can be expected from the board or the working groups due to limited resources, which will focus on the main SOTM in Denver. The recent (main) SOTM conferences have provided a net income to the OSMF financials and therefore the board does not see a need to provide funding to any regional SOTM.

Summary of Communication Working Group call of 01 November 2010

Analytics configured and implemented for blog.osmfoundation.org (this blog)

CWG approached for link from osm.org to OpenGeoData.org.  Deferred until larger conversation on osm.org front page revisions.  Existing link to OGD from blogs.openstreetmap.org with other community blogs.

CWG still seeks guidance from theme / style -knowledgeable folks in mediawiki and WordPress.  Do you know about these things?  Help point us in the right direction!

CWG to continue to solicit other WGs to assist in these summaries.

Summary of License Working Group call of 02 November 2010

Further discussion of reducing CT 1 to a very short clause somewhat similar to Wikipedia’s “Content that violates any third-party copyrights will be deleted.”

LWG notes the prompt reaction to and resolution of a license issue in Colombia.  Thank you to all involved in this resolution.

A use of OSM data in a television commercial without attribution was brought to the attention of the LWG.  Requires community input.

Summary of Data Working Group call 03 November 2010

Previously mentioned contact (Oct 26) still pending.

Continued encouragement for DWG to take responsibility for moderation on mailing lists, etc.  Members of DWG have little enthusiasm for this proposal.

DWG are monitoring the response of company regarding improper attribution of OSM data in Chile.

DWG are following up an offer for improved data regarding an official source of 12nm data.

Summary of OSMF Board call of 03 November 2010

Backlog tasks were assigned for resolution.

Summary of SotM Working group call of 03 November 2010

Introductions between Denver local team and OSMF team.

Summary of Strategic Working Group IRC Chat of  04 November 2010

Initial working meeting for the Strategic Working Group was held on IRC in #osm-strategic.  With a full dozen in attendance discussion was lively on the matter of setting a policy for including additional tile layers on the osm.org front page.  This conversation will continue at the next meeting.